Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Disclaimer: Why is it that Warner Brothers owns all the good stuff? Like this summer's top movie (and top R-rated movie). And like a million surefire hits next year. And Harry Potter. And they own Eyes Wide Shut, too, which I bring up in this chapter. Stanley Kubrick owns it, too, or would own it if he were still alive (RIP). J.K. Rowling owns Potterstuff, too. Yeah, that's all.

Chapter Twenty-two

In Which Harry Holds a Personal Grudge Against Stanley Kubrick

The next day was the most triumphant Tuesday in Ivana's whole life. She woke up at 6:00 as she always did, and within one hour and thirteen minutes she had taken a shower, brushed her hair, applied her Makeup Charms, made her bed, eaten her breakfast, and sent a Howler to the Howler company complaining that her Howlers weren't working. She was just about to leave the house when her fire flared, and Narcissa Black's head appeared amidst the emerald flames.

"Ivana," the rich Slytherin said stiffly, "We must hold a meeting in my manor in half-an-hour. One of my house-elves has just reported some shocking news."

"Wonderful!" Ivana crowed maliciously. Narcissa pulled her head out of the flames, allowing Loser's mom to step in herself and shout, "Malfoy Manor!"

After a few seconds of spinning, Ivana landed neatly in the fireplace of the Malfoy's grand ballroom with hardly a speck on her. What little there was she flicked off with an air of contempt. "What is it, Narcissa?" she asked, stepping out into the room. "What has happened? Please tell me it's something we can use against Dumbledore."

Narcissa Black stood a few meters away from the fireplace, stroking the fur that lined her black linen robes. "Let's wait until the others arrive, and I'll tell you then," she said. "I've sent them all memos."

Ivana stared hard at Narcissa's face. The mistress of Malfoy Manor always retained some degree of boredom in her mask-like features, but this time a manic glint tinged her eyes. It was hard to say whether she looked victorious or angry... or maybe vindictive. Ivana's curiosity was definitely piqued.

She didn't need to wait long for fulfillment. Within the next thirty minutes, all the mothers had arrived. Their numbers had now swelled to eighty, with Narcissa and Ivana heading the group as always. Everyone sat down in the sleek black armchairs and waited for the meeting to begin.

"I've got something to tell you all!" Mrs. Abbot blurted out into the silence.

"Wait for it," Ivana said, commandeering. "Narcissa is about to tell us something of great importance." She motioned to Narcissa, who stepped forward.

"One of the House-elf spies returned this morning," she told the wide-eyed crowd. Everyone listened intently except for Mrs. Abbot, who was bouncing up and down in her seat, impatient to share her own bit of news. "He bore a most shocking report. Last night, no less than thirty students conducted an orgy in the Slytherin Common Room."

Every parent gasped, and most followed up with scandalized comments. "That's too awful to believe!" "I knew this play would be a bad influence, but I never saw this coming!" "We must do something about it--today!" The level of agitation in the room was high as the parents blurted out these exclamations to anyone who was even half-listening.

Ivana was close to hyperventilation as she allowed herself to swell with righteous wrath. "Oh holy Merlin, he must be stopped!" she cried, her voice echoing fearsomely in the grand ballroom. Everyone else fell silent and huddled in their armchairs, startled into silence by Ivana's sudden cry. "We have let Dumbledore go way too far with his ridiculous ideas, and now we are reaping the consequences."

"You don't think my precious Hannah had anything to do with the--the orgy, do you?" Mrs. Abbot whispered tremulously to nobody in particular.

"The House-elf didn't say," Narcissa said, not that she cared about any student other than Draco. "All I know is that

it took place last night in the Slytherin Common Room, but it included people from all houses." And it was centered

on Draco. But she wasn't about to say that out loud.

"That's a bright lot we've raised," Xenophilius hooted proudly. "Talk about from the mouths of babes and infants! We should take a page out of their book and conduct our own orgy."

"Stop with the unhelpfulness, Mr. Lovegood, or Narcissa will ask you to leave!" Ivana snapped. She would say she didn't know why Xenophilius still attended their meetings, except she had the sneaking feeling it was simply to aggravate her. "Now back to what I was saying. By allowing Dumbledore to remain in his position as headmaster, we have essentially sown the seeds of evil into the very school our children attend. As the cultivator of our sons' and daughters' interests, it is our duty to weed out every negative influence that could choke their wellbeing." She spoke loudly and clearly, actually grateful for the orgy. It had sparked the parents' ire and was the perfect accusation to use against the barmy old headmaster. Strike one against Dumbledore!

"You just compared our children to plants," Xenophilius said incredulously.

"But of course," Ivana said stiffly. "It is our duty to nurture them and shield them from the world's harsh environment until they are fully mature. We must also give them the proper nutrients they need to grow. You wouldn't water your potatoes with poison, would you?"

"Potatoes?" Xenophilius half-laughed, half-scoffed. "You think our children are vegetables?"

"It's a metaphor!" Ivana said hotly. "It's not meant to be taken literally! Now answer the question!"

"You mean the one about watering a plant with poison? I most certainly wouldn't! And I wouldn't dream of feeding Luna poison, either."

"That proves my point!" Ivana cried triumphantly. "Since you wouldn't feed a plant poison, why would we feed our children profanity and nudity? We shouldn't!"

The parents mumbled in agreement. Mrs. Abbot nodded like a bobble-head; she was so eager to speak she looked ready to lay an egg. She opened her mouth, but before she could squeeze a word in edgewise, Mr. Lovegood continued the argument.

"Now here, Ivana, your logic becomes faulty. You say that profanity and nudity are poison, but they are clearly not. In fact, for the past four weeks, you have been comparing them to filth and dirtiness. And I'll have you know, as an experienced gardener myself, that filth (plus compost and a little bit of magic) do wonders to a growing plant. So, by your own logic, it is actually vital for our children to reel off profanities and participate in orgies."

"That makes no sense at all!" Ivana screeched, stamping her foot on the expensive rug beneath her.

"Hey, you're the one who dreamed up the plant analogy!" Xenophilius said, throwing up his hands as if she was a particular offense to his senses. "I'm only building on what you started."

"I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU!" Mrs. Abbot couldn't hold it in any longer. She let the words burst from her lips, stopping the argument cold. The parents all breathed sighs of relief. "I've got something to tell you."

"Then tell us!" Ivana sounded faintly annoyed that Mrs. Abbot had cut off the argument, but inwardly she was relieved. Mr. Lovegood's keen grasp on debating and his aptitude at derailing her reasoning rather ruffled her. She had to watch herself from now on: She now suspected that Xenophilius came to the meetings not only to annoy her, but to upset her objectives as well. And that must never happen: She couldn't let the editor of The Quibbler make a fool out of her.

"I work in the courtrooms down at the Ministry," Mrs. Abbot said, "and I was reading up on some old cases from last century. I found one that particularly caught my eye, so I copied it and brought it here." She pulled out short scroll and handed it to Ivana, who began scanning it with a manic concentration. "Basically, back in 1803 a few parents caught Headmaster Dwyrtle Plumm painting portraits of some of the students as they posed for him in the nude. It turned out he never physically touched them, so he wasn't breaking any of the rules set out in the Hogwarts Canon, but the court ruled that he be suspended from his position as headmaster for a year, followed by an indefinite probation. Furthermore, any staff member found guilty of being in the presence of a naked student, with or without physical contact of any kind, was to be fired. It was never officially added into the Hogwarts Canon, but as a court precedent the ruling still holds."

Ivana's heart had been racing when Xenophilius was reaching the upper hand in their argument. Now, her heart was racing again, but this time out of sheer joy. She threw her arms into the air and screeched, "YEEEEEESSSS! Oh holy Merlin, thank you! Our dear children are finally safe!" Strike two against Dumbledore!

"Let's go get him arrested, then!" Narcissa said firmly. "Now that we have a charge, I can bribe a judge into giving us a warrant. I'll leave right now, in fact!"

"No, not yet!" Ivana cried. Narcissa stopped, and she, along with all the other parents, frowned curiously at Loser's mum, wondering why she wanted to wait when she'd already been waiting for the past month.

"Not yet," Ivana repeated. "We must wait for the opportune moment, right at a time when Dumbledore can't possibly weasel out or even post a bail. We want the play to be dead on its feet, and the way to do that is to get rid of the director at such a time that the kids cannot recover and put on the production themselves. So get the warrant, Narcissa, but we can't act on it... not just yet, at any rate."

Her heart swelled in her breast, and her stomach soared as she got as close to an orgasm as her unsexed self would ever get. Putting the headmaster out of action at the last possible moment was strike three in her plan. And from there, Professor Dumbledore was officially out!

**********

White Ivana had a glorious Tuesday, Madam Pomfrey couldn't say the same. One First-Year stumbled in at 7:00 in the morning with half his hand blown off, and the matron had to pop him quickly into bed and force-feed him a beaker of Skele-Gro. He spat it out twice. And when he finally swallowed it, he went into convulsions of pain. For the rest of the day, his moans filled the Infirmary, and Madame Pomfrey was obliged to draw the curtains around his bed so that the other patients weren't disturbed. These other patients, by the way, included a Slytherin who bled profusely out his anus, a Sixth-Year who had painfully burnt his chest hairs down to the follicle, and a Hufflepuff girl whose skin bubbled from a potion she'd spilled on herself in Snape's class. Another student wandered in with a dying cat, and Madame Pomfrey sent her off to Hagrid in exasperation. And then McGonagall walked by and asked for a headache cure. That was never a good sign.

"Are you feeling alright, Minerva?" Poppy Pomfrey asked her colleague.

"It's just a headache, Poppy," Minerva said crisply. "It isn't the end of the world."

"Something's been bothering you," the nurse pressed onward, knowing that McGonagall only asked for medicine if she truly needed it. "I can see it."

McGonagall retained a poker face as she rebutted, "I'm fine, Poppy. I am grateful for your concern."

She didn't sound very grateful. This made Madame Pomfrey even more suspicious, so she pried a bit deeper with soft words and a slight frown. "I can help make it better, if you only tell me what it is. Won't you tell me, Minerva?"

McGonagall sighed and placed her hands on her hips. "Poppy, it's nothing! Now just get me a headache cure! Please."

Madame Pomfrey had seen enough patients with suspicious symptoms to know when to back off. And so she did, but with much huffing as she doled out a pain reliever to the Transfiguration professor and sent her on her way. "No hanging around, now," she said, knowing that a tinge of annoyance had crept into her voice. "You've a class to teach, and I have patients to cure."

The worst part of the day, however, came when Madame Pomfrey realized exactly what day it was. She had just placed a damp towel on the head of her Skele-Gro patient and was busy comforting him when she started in shock. "Ssssh, now, it's alr--wait a damn second!"

She rushed over to the calendar, praying she was wrong. She wasn't. It was the second day of December. "Holy H. Q. fucking Merlin!" she breathed to herself. "Damn it all to hell!"

A second later, the door opened, and Ivana the Tampon Lady strolled in, flexing her fingers and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. She didn't even greet the matron but barged into her unoccupied office and began searching for the tampons. Madame Pomfrey balled her fists and resisted the urge to yell profanities at Loser's infernal mother. She whirled furiously around on her feet and stalked back to her patient.

In two minutes, Ivana was out of the office, twiddling a box of tampons between her hands. Madame Pomfrey determinedly kept her back to Tampon Lady, praying that she'd just leave with her new steal of vagina plugs. However, the matron's luck was not that providential.

"Dumbledore's looking forward to his play."

"Aaugh!" Madame Pomfrey jumped and turned around to see that Ivana stood a mere three feet behind her. "Don't do that!"

"He's going to be severely disappointed," her nemesis continued without apology. "Dumbledore's days of ruining this school are over. By the end of this week, you'll be free of his tyranny forever!"

"What a relief!" Madame Pomfrey sighed, her voice laden so thick with sarcasm that her throat caked up.

"You do not realize now how great your release will be," Ivana continued inconsiderately, "but when he's gone and you finally taste the freedom from his regime, you'll wonder why you didn't get rid of him years ago!"

"Mmph," Madame Pomfrey grumbled, muffling a yell that longed to escape from her lungs. Sometimes she wanted forget Hippocrates ever existed so she could Hex Tampon Lady into the world beyond the next! It was bad enough that she came in here once a month to steal tampons. It was bad enough that she was distracting Madame Pomfrey from her patients. How, then, could she dare assume that the staff would be glad to see Dumbledore leave? To what depths of insensitivity could this greedy bitch sink?

But Madame Pomfrey stayed quiet. The more she said, the more Ivana took it as an invitation to hang around, and the nurse's life was hell enough already. So she started a round of the silent treatment, and in half-a-minute Ivana left, too smug to be offended by the nurse's attitude.

Thank fucking Merlin that cooze is gone! Madame Pomfrey swore to herself. Now I can return to my work in peace.

And so she dabbed the washcloth on her patient's head and cast a Cleaning Charm on the sweaty sheets. As she did this, a horrible feeling crept around her brain. She looked back at the door through which Tampon Lady had left five minutes ago.

She knows something, Madame Pomfrey realized. That sneaky bitch has some trick up her sleeve. Just what is it, though?

**********

Tuesday became Wednesday, which became Thursday, and still Ivana hadn't made her move. The dress rehearsal on Wednesday went marvelously, and all the students expected good things from Thursday's practice. Whether it was because they couldn't wait to act in front of a live audience or because they couldn't wait to get the whole thing out of the way, the actual performances on Friday and Saturday could not come soon enough.

Draco, however, wasn't thinking about the play when classes let out at 3:00. Although he was going to head straight down to the Great Hall after dropping off his bags in his dormitory, his role as Godric Gryffindor was the last thing on his mind. What had swallowed his existence for the past three days was his penis.

He was blueballing like nobody's fucking business! For three days, he had longed for sex, and for three days he had not gotten it. Consequently, he had experienced many an endless bout in which his penis went through varying stages of an erection. He avoided touching it or bumping it or exciting it in anyway, and if he waited patiently, it would calm down. Then he'd massage his testicles to work the oxygen back into his blood, and for a few minutes he would get relief. Then, however, his mind would return to all the vaginas and mouths and arseholes that were waiting patiently for his penis, and he would become hard once again, intensifying the pain of his condition.

Draco walked bandy-leggedly into his dorm and dropped off his bags. "Oooh, how much longer?" he groaned to himself, unable to contain the dialogue within his head. "Oh holy Merlin, I need an ejaculation!" After the orgy, none of his sex objects bothered with anything as petty as privacy anymore. They stood in the halls and openly asked to fuck him. He begged off because of homework or because he was pressed for time, or because he'd become mysteriously ill, but he knew his excuses couldn't last. Any day now everyone would become suspicious of his lack of sex. And it was getting increasingly hard to resist them, especially since he had an addiction that begged to be satisfied. He'd taken to spending his free time in his dormitory just to avoid it all.

\However, Draco wasn't even safe in the confines of his dormitory. As he fell back against the bed and pummeled his hard penis in the hopes that the pain would shrivel it, a female leapt lightly onto his bed, her tail held high and her nose sniffing eagerly at Draco's privates.

Yes, it was Brittany the cat, still in the tremendous throes of heat, and she still had not yet been fucked.

"I just want to tell you, Brittany," Draco gasped, "that I now know how you feel. You've been going for months without sex, and it must have been the worst torture in your whole short life! I'm sorry for making it worse: I'm sorry for pushing you and kicking you and yelling at you, when all you wanted was a good lay."

"Meow," Brittany replied. She turned around and spread her legs, revealing her moist vulva. Draco gulped and stared at the quivering privates, his mind short-circuiting.

"Now, now, Brittany," he whispered, his voice breaking. "It's okay. Run off and find a minx in the sack, there's a good kitty."

He gently tried to cover her privates with her tail, but she was insistent. "MEOW!" she cried, thrusting the tensile appendage into the air. She backed in between Draco's legs and rubbed herself against his raging erection.

"DON'T!" Draco shrieked, leaping out of his bed. Brittany hissed fiercely and rubbed herself against his pillow, leaving sex juices that stained the white linen. "Don't... tempt me, you evil cat! I... I won't give in!"

And he rushed out of the room, pulling his robes around his obvious erection. He only hoped it would fade during play practice.

~~~~~

Everyone entered play practice that afternoon with a case of the jitters. Neville nearly tore his costume trying to put it on, and Harry tripped over Luna's feet as they walked through the doors hand-in-hand. Everyone was acutely aware that they were one day away from their grand stage debuts, and despite the flawless practice on Wednesday, they were all uniformly terrified.

Dumbledore did something to make it a million times worse. When all the cast and crew had gathered onstage, he strode into their midst with an announcement. "We're adding a new musical number!" he cooed joyfully. "How does that sound?"

Everyone drew in a collective gasp. The chorus extras groaned, while the rest of the actors looked back and forth in terror, wondering who'd be singing the new song.

"Actually," Dumbledore said, "it's a reprise of a previous number. And it involves no choreography. It's just straight singing."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew!" Harry said aloud. "I'm glad this won't be an ordeal, and one day before the play, no less! We don't need any more upsets."

"You are absolutely correct, my dearest Master Potter," Dumbledore said. "By the way, it is you and Luna who will be doing the reprise."

"Ah, dang it," Harry said light-spiritedly. "Which number?"

" 'I've Loved You and Have Never Said a Word,' " Dumbledore replied. "From Act II, you know. Oh, but I've added one verse. No, half-a-verse. It's really very simple. During the reprise, you'll both walk to the front of the stage and face the crowd. You'll sing through the refrain, then verse 1, then the refrain again. Then you'll start spinning slowly, first at arm's length, then draw closer to one another as you sing these words:

"Was life this full before? I cannot say,

For our past pales in light of our today."

Harry pouted at Dumbledore and raised an eyebrow. "You said no choreography," he said in exasperation. "And twirling slowly or whatever we're doing is most definitely choreography."

"Oh, my dear boy, you know what I mean!" Dumbledore said lightly, waving a hand at him. "Next to no choreography. It's really very simple. And I insist you two take the scene as deliberately as possible. Sing it twice as slowly as you do in Act II, and with lots of pauses, in which you'll either face the audience or face each other in profile."

"Why?" Harry asked, his pout deepening into a frown. "What about the two-hour runtime you were trying to achieve?"

"It'll have to be two hours and four minutes," Dumbledore conceded. "But I must include the reprise."

"Why?" Harry pressed. "Four minutes is awfully damn long for a reprise. Don't you think the audience will get bored?"

"Of course not, dearest boy," came the flippant reply. "They'll be too busy staring at your penis."

There was a beat of silence. Then another beat. Harry blinked twice per beat and lost control of his jaw. At the same time his eyebrows jutted so strongly into his hairline it looked like his face was separating from the shock. When he regained his voice, it was barely above a whisper "What?" he said. "My... Dumbledore, this isn't funny."

"But I'm not going for funny!" Dumbledore said, though he laughed jovially. "I'm seeking the line between super-sensual and erotic and treading it for seven minutes straight. If you haven't already guessed, this reprise is happening in Act IV, scene iii, after you two have taken your clothes off. You and Luna will pretend to have sex--make it rough and passionate!--and afterwards you'll exhibit yourselves during a four-minute reprise. How does that sound?"

Harry was so furious he couldn't speak. His draw dropped so low that he was sure his face would unhinge if he opened his mouth any wider. He wasn't the only one with an open mouth; just about every person in the room attracted to the male sex was gaping at Dumbledore, so much so that a House-elf popped onto the stage to wipe up the drool. "That's more like the line between erotic and pornographic!" Euan Abercrombie breathed in awe.

"Try the line between pornographic and illegal acts involving minors!" Harry burst out, finally finding his voice again. He strode across the stage from one end of the proscenium to the other, treading a severely elliptical orbit around Dumbledore as he built up his legendary temper.

"You are both of age," Dumbledore said, faintly annoyed.

"Oh, great!" Harry yelled back. "Fucking great! Is that what they say now? Apparently 'He looked of age' and 'She was begging for it' don't work anymore! Now it has to be, 'Oh, they may be students, but they're seventeen.' Dumbledore, we ARE students! We're your fucking students, you sick pervert!"

"Now Harry, that's being a little harsh," Dumbledore said, pursing his lips. "I don't technically teach you--I'm just your headmaster."

"Your students!" Harry yelled again, ignoring the headmaster's insertion. "Why, Dumbledore, why?"

Dumbledore waited a moment, just to make sure Harry had let out enough steam so that he didn't interrupt. "I could lie, Harry," the headmaster said. "I could lie and say that the play needed another reprise, that the scene needed a musical number to add to the emotional impact. But I stand for honor and justice and the education of our students, so when I can, I tell the truth."

As Harry stopped pacing, Dumbledore began pacing himself, much more methodically than his century-younger pupil. "The truth..." he uttered, weighing each word on his tongue. "The truth is a beautiful--and terrible--thing. If not treated with caution, it can devastate the very core of our lives. And yet, if we hide the truth, we further devastate everything that we, as wizards of the Light, stand for.

"And so I tell you the truth. I extended the nude scene for one reason: Last night, as I lay in bed with my dear friend Connie, we watched Eyes Wide Shut."

Harry waited, dumbfounded, for Dumbledore to put this statement in a more reasonable light. He didn't. Hermione, however, nodded as if everything now made perfect sense. Goyle turned to her and whispered, "You've watched Eyes Wide Shut, too?"

"Of course!" Hermione said. "I'm shocked you'd think otherwise! Stanley Kubrick is only the best director of all time!" Goyle bobbed his head in fervent agreement.

"Twenty-five points to Gryffindor and Slytherin," Dumbledore said. "Harry Potter, I hope you're listening to your best friend. Stanley Kubrick can do no wrong. Therefore, any deed we do to be more like Stanley Kubrick is a good deed. And thus, if Stanley Kubrick has a scene featuring ten minutes of straight nudity, then you must give me at least a deficient seven."

"What?" Harry wailed. "That makes no sense, Dumbledore!"

"How does it not?" Dumbledore queried. "I just explained it perfectly."

"Actually, it doesn't really make sense," Hermione corrected her headmaster. "Because Eyes Wide Shut isn't an erotic thriller. It's a psychosexual drama, and it's not meant to be sexy, so it doesn't really translate from that film to this play."

"I'm aware of that," Dumbledore said. "I've watched the film a dozen times, after all, and I know nobody could ever recreate the mood in that scene. Besides, I'm not going for creepy. All I'm trying to translate is the thoroughly deliberate nature of the nudity. I want the naked bodies to be there... onstage, for minutes on end without giddy interruption. It'll be an elegant scene featuring two lovers in an intimate moment. Think how beautiful it will be!"

"Think how humiliating it will be!" Harry railed, his entire body trembling. When he clasped his hand to his temple, it came away wet with perspiration. "I'm going starkers... in front of a thousand people! For seven cunt-fucking minutes straight! I fucking hate Stanley Kubrick! I hope he goes to hell and dies!"

"Fifty points from Gryffindor!" Dumbledore cried, very much affronted. "I don't ever want to hear you saying something like that about Stanley Kubrick again! He died just four days after submitting the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to the studio--now how do you feel?"

"If he's in hell, I feel great!" Harry spat mutinously, despite the urgent hisses from other Gryffindors to keep quiet.

"Another fifty points," Dumbledore said severely, eliciting a collective groan from Harry's housemates. "Now why are you so against appearing naked onstage? It's just nudity!"

Harry opened his mouth before he realized that he had no explanation for why exactly he was against appearing nude onstage. But really, why the hell did he need an explanation? Couldn't he beg off for modesty, or was that omitted from Dumbledore's feverish equations? "I... I just don't like it!" he spluttered. "It's... I'm just embarrassed by it! Can't you understand that?"

"No, I can't," Dumbledore replied crisply. "Luna isn't fazed by this nudity thing at all. As an actress, she realizes that delivering a strong performance is more important than maintaining some misguided idea of dignity. Are you trying to sabotage my play, Harry?"

This was so unfair that Harry starting pacing again solely to stop himself from punching Dumbledore in the face. "Don't you dare turn this around on me! This is not about me ruining your stupid fucking play, this is about you using me to enhance some juvenile fantasy that you still haven't purged from your system. I refuse to be guilted into doing a nude scene by someone who's been manipulating me for my entire life!"

"My dear boy," Dumbledore said grievously, "Manipulating is a harsh word. I haven't done anything of the--"

At that very moment, an owl swooped down from the rafters and dropped a letter on Harry's head. He snatched it furiously as it fluttered to the ground, and with shaking fingers he tore apart the seal and began reading furiously.

Harry,

After what you did to Aunt Marge, I fucking hate you. I'm only writing to you because I want to gloat over your humiliation. Mum and Dad told me about how Dumbledore's making you appear naked in that stupid play of yours, and we all agreed that he chose you because you're famous and will glue arses in the seats. Hah, only goes to show that all that fame will backfire on you! I hope it's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you!

I hate you.

Dudley

So here's what this letter was all about : During the war, Voldemort had decided to taunt Harry by killing off his relatives. As the Dursleys had been visiting Aunt Marge at the time, she ended up being involved in the fight as well. The Order managed to whisk the Dursleys to safety, but not before Aunt Marge lost her life. Dudley now hated Harry for it. Aunt Marge had given him the most money and the biggest presents, and now she was gone. If Harry was as shallow as Dudley, he'd be mad about that, too.

Right now, however, Harry had no energy to spare over the depths of pettiness to which his fat cousin would sink. Every fiber of his being was focused on the implications of one single line: "He chose you because you're famous..."

A fire raged in Harry's eyes. His limbs trembled in fury, and he didn't even pay attention when he emitted a wave of accidental magic that lacerated every window in the hall with spider-hair cracks. All his hatred was focused on one man: the old headmaster who stood in front of him, grinning like a barmy hare.

"You... you manipulator!" Harry cried, his voice shaking. "I was right to say it--you've been using me!"

"My dear boy, I can explain--"

"YOU'VE BEEN USING ME!" Harry exploded, stamping his foot into the floor. "You don't want me to act--you just want me for my sex appeal! You want me to stand naked in front of a thousand people because it'll swell your box office!

"My whole life you've been manipulating me! You put me with the Dursleys--the fucking Dursleys!--'for my own good.' Oh Merlin, I hated my childhood, and you could have prevented that! You could have sacrificed my safety for my happiness, but no, you had to give me to the three fuck-arse people who hate me the most. And then after that, you let me risk my life literally dozens of times, when in most cases you could have stepped in and fixed things for me. Oh, but you let me do that because it made me stronger, so that when I had to kill Voldemort--when I had to kill another man AT FUCKING SIXTEEN, I'd be ready! Speaking of killing Voldemort, you didn't tell me about that until a full year after he came back. A FULL FUCKING YEAR! Guess what? I watched students die in front of me! I watched Cedric get cut down with the exact same curse that killed my parents. I watched Lee Jordan get Crucio'd to death, and there was nothing I could do about it! I saw Death Eaters raping a four-year-old and her little baby brother in the middle of Diagon Alley, and I was so mad I killed them, but it didn't help, because it didn't mend her shattered hymen or restore the anal blood loss that killed the boy, and I also had a slew of murders on my conscience to deal with, and I still have nightmares about it to this day, and it's all your fault because you said you'd diverted the attack when, in fact, you failed to do so!"

He managed the last sentence without inhaling once. He huffed painfully, gulped in a lungful of air, and continued.

"I thought I was done with all that! When the war ended, I was sure you'd let me return to my life. I was positive that you were through with your manipulations, that you'd finally treat me like a student instead of an instrument, but I was wrong. You still want to mess up my life for your gain! You think you know how to set everything right, but guess what? YOU DON'T! You don't know a single fucking thing!"

"My dear boy--"

"I don't want to hear it!" Harry snarled. "I'm sure whatever explanation you have sounds logical in your mind, but you know what? Yours is a twisted mind, a twisted logic. And I don't want to hear it."

With these words, Harry leapt off the stage and strode towards the door in a towering fury. As he neared the other end of the hall, he turned around and yelled, "DON'T FOLLOW ME! I'M NOT SETTING ANOTHER FOOT ON THAT STAGE EVER AGAIN!"

He stormed through the double doors, slamming behind them. For the briefest sliver of a split second you could hear a pin drop, but then the reverberations caused the windows to groan loudly before they shattered simultaneously, showering a cascade of noisy glass across the ground. Everyone stood as if petrified, listening dumbly to the cacophony of window fragments that bounced across the polished stone floor.

When the last tinkle faded into silence, the theater troupe held position for a few second longer until Dumbledore finally slumped forward. "Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger?" he said wearily.

"Yes, Headmaster?" they replied in unison.

"You know the day when Harry confessed just how extensively the Dursleys had been abusing him?"

"Yes," Ron said grimly, cracking his knuckles.

"You know all the plans you came up with to take revenge on them?"

"Yes," Hermione said, fondling her wand vindictively.

"I give you permission to do everything you were planning, and more. Those darn Dursleys! They ruin everything."

Hermione and Ron turned to each other and shrugged. "Might as well," Ron said. "I still hate those fucking Dursleys, and Dumbledore's always stopped us from taking revenge before."

"Let's go for it!" Hermione said evilly. And the two rushed off to perpetrate a wide variety of revenge-oriented nastiness against Harry's abusive relatives.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cast stared at Dumbledore. Nobody knew what to say after that huge row, so they left the burden of the next spoken word on the headmaster. He tried to rise to the occasion, but he didn't exactly succeed. "For heaven's sakes," he muttered ineloquently. "I hate it when he pulls the death card... And the abusive relative card... It's only a bit of nudity!"

"We can't do our dress rehearsal without Harry," Draco pointed out, straight-faced.

Dumbledore sighed and tapped his foot against the floor. "Can we get him back? How long does he sulk like this?"

"It depends," Neville supplied. "Sometimes a few hours."

"And sometimes a few days," Luna added, looking utterly unfazed. "He may even refuse to act on opening night."

"Hmm," Dumbledore sighed. "Goshdarn it all to twitting heck. Well, well. I guess you all can go, then. Practice your lines!"

And so the students left, leaving Dumbledore alone on the empty stage.

Was Harry right? Had Dumbledore been using the young boy again? Was he merely a manipulating old man? He was so convinced that this play would help his students become better people, and for the most part it had. Loser seemed to finally be gathering his own moral fiber--he wasn't quite the strong person he could become, but Dumbledore felt that the Hufflepuff boy was right on the verge of inheriting his true persona. Then there was Ron: Drawing him out of his macho shell had worked like a charm. Forcing Neville and Draco to wrestle naked seemed to have awakened something in Draco that wasn't there before--what exactly it was, Dumbledore didn't know, but it seemed beneficial. He'd also helped Ginny and Pansy escape their failing relationships quicker than they might have otherwise. And that Gregory Goyle/Hermione Granger matchmaking had been a brilliant move on his part!

See? He had done so much good amongst his student body already! Not only had he improved their personal lives, but he was also teaching them to stand up against censorship and illogical authority. That was always a much-needed trait in this world, whatever the time and place.

Basically, the only person who hadn't benefited was Harry Potter. Again. Everything that happened seemed to improve everyone's life except Harry's. Why did fate have it in for that poor boy?

"Come now, Albus!" he scolded himself aloud. "This is ridiculous, the boy is overreacting! I don't know what's so bad about showing your penis to a crowd of people. I'd have done it at his age. Heck, I'd do it now!"

And thus the moral quandary stood. Harry was being stupid, but did Dumbledore have the right to change that?

**********

After dinner, Dumbledore headed back up to his office with a jumpy heart and a quivering stomach. Tomorrow was the grand opening of his masterpiece play, and one of his stars had run off. He had not appointed understudies: He had handpicked every actor for a reason, and replacing any of them would screw the whole play over.

Chin up, Albus, he comforted himself. Tomorrow morning I'll get Miss Granger and Mister Weasley to talk some sense into him. Everything will be all right.

But despite this mental bolstering, Dumbledore still felt a mounting pile of worry in his stomach. He threw a handful of Floo powder into his fireplace and stuck his head in, calling out, "Connie's place!"

After a minute of spinning which Dumbledore found delightfully disorienting, his head appeared in a small fireplace, looking out into a cozily furnished apartment. It wasn't a particularly big place, but the abundance of creature comforts--the plush sofa, the crafts projects, the myriad of books, and even a widescreen TV--left the beholder in no doubt that Connie was comfortably, if not richly, situated. Connie herself sat on a sofa surrounded by pillows and throws that looked soft to the point of being sinful.

"Hey, Connie," Dumbledore said forlornly.

"Hi there, old man!" she said eagerly, looking up from the slim volume of poetry she had been reading.

"I feel depressed," he said. "I need some rough sex to cheer me up."

"Why, sure!" Connie said compassionately, placing her book of poetry aside. "Can you bring me on through? "

"Yes, just a second," Dumbledore said. As Connie heaved her old body off the sofa, Dumbledore sent his hand through the Floo connection. When it appeared in Connie's apartment, she was there to grab it, and it was only a matter of seconds until the two of them landed on the floor of Dumbledore's office, Connie on top.

"You wanna tell me what's the matter, old man?" she asked as she slid her skirt up her wrinkled thigh.

"Sex first, talking second," Dumbledore said firmly, working her blouse over her head.

"And sex third!" Connie hooted. "Good choice, Alby!"

They undressed each other on the floor of Dumbledore's office. From there, Connie started manipulating Albus's penis with her wrinkled hands, while he lifted one of her stretched breasts into his mouth. They both moaned in cracked, old-people voices.

It was as they became comfortable with this position that the door burst open. In walked two Aurors, followed by eighty women. As soon as they caught sight of the two-person performance, they all stopped short, and most of the women screamed. Dumbledore let Connie's breast drop out of his mouth just long enough to ask, "Do you mind giving us a bit of privacy? We're trying to have sex." Then he reinserted the breast and started sucking. Connie's hands had never once left his hardening penis.

"ALBUS DUMBLEDORE!" Ivana cried dramatically, her voice filling with an awful swell of emotion: malicious triumph mixed with the trauma of viewing an old couple having rough sex. "We have a warrant for your arrest!"

"Oh, not this again!" Dumbledore sighed around Connie's nipple. She gave a squeal of delight.

"Stop it this instant!" Ivana shrieked.

"Stop doing what?" Dumbledore continued, sending reverberations through Connie's chest.

"Stop doing... that! The Aurors have the warrant here with them, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

"Oh, fuck, that feels marvelous!" Connie breathed in rapture as Dumbledore continued his ministrations. "D'you mind doing that against one of my secret entrances? Like the back one?"

"Sure," Dumbledore said. They began switching the position of their leathery bodies.

"Aurors, what are you waiting for?" Ivana shrieked, trying to not look at Connie and Albus. "Handcuff him immediately!"

Dumbledore's mouth was only an inch away from Connie's anus when the Aurors suddenly jerked him back and snapped a pair of enchanted handcuffs around his wrists.

"Hey!" Connie cried indignantly. "Don't do that, he was about to suck my--"

"You go somewhere and die you mangy old... you mangy old female dog!" Ivana cried at Connie. She turned to survey Dumbledore, naked and handcuffed, and her heart swelled with pride. "Oh, Albus Dumbledore," she gloated, "your time is through, old man, your time is through!"

She marched from office with naked Dumbledore, two Aurors, and eighty mothers in tow. Connie shuffled backwards toward the door, her arse jutting out at an obscene angle. "Hey, you guys get back here!" she yelled. "One of you had better stay behind and finish this!"

A/N: Once again, I sacrifice chronology for the sake of my story. Harry's 7^th year is 1997, and Eyes Wide Shut wasn't released until summer 1999. By the way, every single one of you should watch Eyes Wide Shut, and I mean everybody. And watch anything else by Kubrick, too.

Hmm. The old-people sex. I wasn't planning on that. Nor was I planning the orgy scene in Chapter 21 or the coprophilia in Chapter 8. In fact, I was originally planning for this story to be tamer than my other novel-length fic The Scarlett Letter. But it ended up being a lot more graphic, and The Scarlett Letter is a pretty "hard-R" already. If I was sorry, I'd apologize. But I'm not sorry!

Thanks to my beta Lisa725, who performed an amazingly quick turnaround on this chapter! It's because of her that you're reading this chapter today instead of over the weekend. Remember to review: a one-liner is better than nothing at all! And I'll try to get the next chapter posted quicker this time.